


Five Things That Always Happen To Daniel Jackson

by papersage, sage_theory (papersage)



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-02-22
Updated: 2005-02-22
Packaged: 2017-10-20 11:57:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/212540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/papersage/pseuds/papersage, https://archiveofourown.org/users/papersage/pseuds/sage_theory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Like it says on the tin, five things that always happen to Daniel Jackson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Things That Always Happen To Daniel Jackson

**1\. Exhaustion**

Jack is asleep in front of his laptop in his office. Daniel comes in, exhausted but not completely wiped, to tell Jack that there's no more translating that can be done on the artifact from P3X-901 and he desperately needs shut eye. Daniel wonders, briefly, why he never saw Hammond like this. Never came in and found the man face down in his work. Walter Davis passed by the door almost on tiptoes. Daniel eyes him.

"Sergeant," he calls.

Walter turns around very slowly. And whispers, "Yes?"

"How long, *exactly*, has Jack been sleeping in his office?"

Walter checks his watch. "A little over three hours."

"And it didn't occur to you to wake him up?"

Walter looks slightly ashamed, but more fearful. "With all due respect, it's better to let him sleep."

"When's the last time he went home?"

Walter asks, fearfully, "This week?"

Daniel lets out a breath and goes into Jack's office. Walter sneaks away. Jack's a light sleeper, so Daniel figures that just coming in will wake him up. But it doesn't. So he stands over him for a few moments. He does not wake up.

Daniel wishes he could do that cool Jaffa-voice thing that Teal'c does, the one where he doesn't raise the volume, but somehow hits a frequency that makes a person's brain jolt to life like they should be dodging bullets before they even realized there was gunfire.

"Jack."

Nothing.

"Jack." Only this time a little louder.

Still, nothing.

"Jack. Hey, Jack. Wake up."

Again, nothing.

Daniel thinks about shaking him awake, but learned his lesson about doing that right after Jack nearly snapped his wrist in their tent. That was six years ago and Jack's had nothing but Goa'uld, Jaffa, and bad Asgard experiments to make him just that much more jumpy about being grabbed in the middle of the night. So Daniel sits across from him and whistles until he sees Jack start to stir.

"Morning, sunshine," he says, with a grin that a cat has when it's not only eaten the canary, but the goldfish, the pet hamster and maybe a small dog. "We're having eggs for breakfast."

"Over easy," Jack murmurs, picking himself up off the desk and rubbing his eyes. He looks up and sees his office and Daniel. And it's evident that he's realizing that not only are there no eggs, but it's not morning either. And he's definitely not sunshine. Jack folds his laptop down and continues rubbing his eyes.

"Jack – come on. We're leaving."

"I wasn't aware that I had somewhere to go."

"I'm taking you home with me."

"I can get home by myself. You go on," Jack says. Daniel levels a look at him. "What? You don't trust me to go home?"

"No, I trust you with my life. Which is exactly why I'm taking you home."

That seems to make something in Jack give in. He unplugs the laptop and pushes his chair under and walks out of his office. Daniel turns the lights out behind him and thinks that they're both going to be there until the lights go out for good.

 

 

 **2\. Injury**

"What the hell are you doin', Daniel?"

Sarcasm and gruff voice aside, it's the best thing Daniel could hope to hear upon waking up. Especially since he was only unconscious due to a staff blast. Jack would never bark at him unless he was going to live. Because Daniel *knows* Jack's "you're going to die" voice and it's stuttery and softer and completely incapable of expressing anything close to what Jack actually means.

This voice is very clearly saying "what the hell are you doing, Daniel".

Daniel cautiously opens his eyes. "Jack?"

"You got shot. Again."

Daniel rolls his eyes and takes a deep breath. He wiggles fingers and toes experimentally.

"I'm terribly sorry for the inconvenience, I guess."

Jack sighs. "I swear, you get shot, zatted, and killed more than any other person I know. The cost of your medical care alone is enough to run a small country."

"Well, if it'll be more cost efficient, I'll just die next time," Daniel replies, with a sarcastic, tight smile. He looks around and sees a leg cast held in traction and a bandage around his chest.

The banter is even more reassuring because it means that not only is he going to live, but he's going to be perfectly all right. Jack would never bitch at a man who'd just become permanently disabled. Well, not at first.

Jack smiles. "Here's a question - have you tried *not* getting shot?"

"You know, it hadn't occurred me. Thanks. I'll try that."

Jack taps his fingers, fidgets, then gets up to leave. "I better go back to work."

"How long have you been here?"

He checks his watch. "A couple – five – hours."

"Five hours? You sat here with me unconscious for five hours?"

"Oh yeah," he says, voice betraying that Minnesota lilt, grinning wider. "We had a great conversation. I talked, you...dozed. Really, we should do it more often."

Daniel's been around Jack long enough to sort out the important things from the padding. He say, like it isn't important, "It means something that you stayed."

Jack nods. "Yeah. It means I'm crazy."

 

 

  
 **3\. Failure**

"Well, dial it again. Are you absolutely sure you put in the right address?"

Daniel puts the notebook down beside where Sam is dialing the coordinates he managed to translate off an artifact. Daniel thinks there might be some ruins from an Ancient outpost or settlement. There might even be leftover Ancient goodies. Jack actually looked interested in the briefing. Even a little excited. He looked proud of Daniel. Like he'd always known Daniel was going to pull something brilliant out of the air. Or other less air-like places.

"Daniel, it's not working. We can't get a lock," Sam tells him. She frowns, because she knows just how much it meant to him. 

"Can we at least locate the planet in space?" Daniel asks.

"Of course," Sam replies. "But there'd be no point."

"What do you mean?"

"Other than the fact that there's no way they'd let you take the Prometheus, this planet is located in a system that we destroyed."

"What?"

"Remember when we blew up a sun?"

"Oh. That system."

"Yeah," Sam says. She pats his arm and leaves just as Jack is coming down the stairs.

"So, how long until we can go get all that Ancient booty?" he asks. Then he stops to think about his choice of words. "Maybe booty isn't the precise term, but I'm sure you could tell me what is."

Daniel has his arms crossed, staring at the gate.

"Nothing."

"Excuse me?"

"Nothing. Because we blew the outpost up trying to kill Apophis. Which, ironically, didn't work. So the precise term is absolutely nothing. Bubkus, if you will."

Jack stands beside him, arms crossed the same way, staring at the gate like he is. "We did what we had to do, Daniel. We did the best with what we had in front of us."

He nods. "I know. Just feels like the walls are starting to close in. Not just the Goa'uld. I used to think they were insurmountable, but..."

"Now they're mountable?" Jack asks. Daniel gives him a strange look. "Bad example."

"Every time we fix something, another thing goes wrong. We find a way to destroy the replicators and oh, look, now they're immune. We finally outfit a ship with hyperdrive capability and then some nutjob in a suit breaks it. We find an Ancient outpost and the batteries are dead. We start freeing the Jaffa and the Goa'uld just build super soldiers to take their place. I guess I can't help asking if we're any better off than we were when we started."

Jack kind of looks Daniel over. "Well, let's look at this scientifically. Take me for instance. When this started I had a gun to my head, Charlie was gone, and Sara was leaving."

"And now?"

"Well, Charlie and Sara are still gone, but at least I've got a good reason to point the gun somewhere else besides my *head*. So that's a bonus. And..."

Jack is smiling in a way that means that he's thought of something really good, but he's got it locked down like an offworld contagion.

"And?"

He smiles, walks backwards a few steps and as he turns, "I'll tell ya later. How about O'Malley's, around nine? I'll buy drinks if you buy dinner."

"Uh, Jack, we're not allowed in O'Malley's anymore."

He retraces a few steps and leans over the railing. "They built a new one out by the mall. I'm sure nobody knows us there. Now go do whatever smart person thing I'm paying you for."

 

 

 

 **4\. Absurdity**

"You really want me to check you in four moves?" asks Daniel, as Jack is hovering above the board holding a pawn.

"That's what you think," he says, putting the pawn down exactly where he meant to.

"It's Friday," Daniel tells Jack while contemplating his next move.

"Has been all day," he replies, smooth and cool as the other side of a silk pillow.

"Well, I just thought that – since it was Friday. And we have a long weekend, that maybe..."

"Daniel, are you saying that I'm boring?"

"No. Just that it's Friday and Sam's out with Pete, Teal'c's karaoking with Siler and we're...playing chess."

"Are you bored?"

"No. Are you?"

"Not really."

"I think that's the problem," Daniel says. "I was kind of looking forward to this."

"So was I. More beer?"

Daniel looks at his beer and is kind of amazed he drank the entire thing. He stares at the board. He's either two moves from completely crushing Jack or six from being wiped out. Depends on what how it goes. "Sure, why not," he calls out.

While Jack's getting beer, Daniel contemplates moving pieces. He's done it before, and Jack never seems to notice when he does. Just keeps on playing. And every single time he's moved them, Jack has ended up winning. Nobody does long shots and narrow escapes and skin-of-the-teeth eleventh hour miracles like Jack. It's as if man needs steep odds just get out of bed in the morning.

Probably explains why he and Jack alternately drive each other insane and get on like a house on fire. A forest on fire, even.

"Are we getting dull in our old age?" 

Jack hands him a beer. "Please. You're a spring chicken, Daniel."

Daniel looks around like somebody could be listening. He leans in. "I found a gray hair the other day," he confides. "Two actually."

Jack smiles and drinks his beer with a nearly cruel amount of glee. "I have my revenge."

"It's not that funny."

Before Daniel can say anything else, Jack's cellphone goes off. He groans and answers it with a gruff, "Is the world ending, Carter?" A few seconds pass. "Oh." Daniel can hear vague voice-noises but can't make out the words, he doesn't need to, because he hear read the translation in Jack's confused and worried hmm's and uh-huh's. Then: "Carter, did I just hear a moo?"

Daniel stops looking over the chessboard and stares, blinking while Jack shrugs and listens on, calmly. Then he closes his cellphone, stares across the board and then rubs his forehead before calling for a car to come pick them up. After that, they just wait and he doesn't explain anything, its as if he's off somewhere in his own head and forgot to put the 'gone fishing' sign out. Daniel just waits for an explanation. For a long time, it seems.

Then he looks over at Daniel, taken out of his semi-brooding, semi-confused state by something. "Apparently there's a bunch of emergency refugees in the SGC and nobody understands what they're saying."

And Daniel smiles unhappily, "I guess I'm playing solo tonight."

"Oh no. You're coming with me."

"Wait a minute, Jack. We have plenty of people at the SGC who can speak whatever language you need."

"Well, there's one language they don't speak."

Jack stands up quickly as he hears the car approaching in the driveway. Daniel stands up but stays where he is. "Which is?"

Jack grabs Daniel's sleeve and is almost dragging him towards the door. He answers, "Mine."

So he goes without arguing, and he figures his weekend wasn't going to get any better without Jack anyway.

He stands by that decision, even when a two ton alien cow has him pinned against the wall and refuses to move. Teal'c and a couple of airmen are desperately pulling at the cow's harness and Sam is trying to tempt it away with something green she grabbed hurriedly out of the botony lab. The cow moos, full of bovine obstinancy. Which is, predictably, when Jack comes wandering down the hallway like he's actually lost. 

"I thought I heard a moo," he comments, conversationally, as he approaches the cow from behind. 

Carter gives him a "Watch out, sir" before going back to making kissing noises at the cow and rustling the leafy green _thing_  in her hand hopefully at it. 

Then Jack looks at the cow for a moment. It looks back at him with large black eyes and chews in a way that's almost flipping Jack the bird. Suddenly, there's an air of a cheesy western standoff. Something about the way Jack is evaluating the cow clearly says "there's not enough room in this mountain for the both of us and by the both of us I mean *you*".

"We having a saying on this planet, Bessie," says Jack, fairly conversationally. The cow continues to stare disinterestedly. "Beef. It's what's for dinner."

The cow doesn't even lift a hoof. Suddenly, Jack slaps the cow on the haunches with a smack that rings in everyone ears. Instantly, two tons of startled bovine takes off down the corridor, hoofs clomping rapidly on concrete, mooing aggressively and frankly, going a lot faster than an animal that size should be capable of. Teal'c, Sam, and the two airmen chase behind it, Sam is still making kissing noises and waving her green leaves.

Daniel plops embarrassingly to the concrete floor and while he knows there are no bones in the gluteus maximus, it still feels like he cracked every one of them. Jack alone stays behind to offer his hand to help Daniel up.

"I remember somebody saying that our night was boring," Jack reminds him.

Daniel straightens his glasses. "Must have been someone else. I would never say anything like that."

 

 

 

 **5\. Love**

Memory obeys no rational rules, it does whatever it pleases. Daniel can forget something in its absence, because he doesn't do it, or feel it, or get it for so long - but the minute all the sensory input right, it's like he never stopped. Everything snaps so neatly into place. It all becomes one continuous, unbroken line in his head. He knows this, a forgotten language that he picks up again with startling fluency. Words and nuances and syntax slide into place the way bodies remember each other. 

Jack arches, Daniel moans. He can't remember why he felt it necessary to hold one of Jack's wrists down, but it feels good. Maybe he's anchoring Jack, holding him in that place because he needs him positioned just so.

And Jack's other hand is making up the difference, besides. It's like a whole other world they build when they do this. Where physics are so flexible that even Sam would throw in the towel, where up and down and right and left are only relevant in relation to bodies. To movement. Right where Jack's lips are and where they've left. Up, higher, higher even though it's not truly a vertical trajectory and down, down deep into Daniel's soul.

And time? Forget about time.

It takes a million years for Daniel to get Jack's boxers off, but then they're going so much faster than light speed. Daniel remembers things that are still happening. Jack's kisses, mostly. Teeth scraping and lips that leave slick trails. He swears he can now see without his eyes, far past even his peripheral, Daniel feels Jack's leg go over his hip and knows what it looks like, in technicolor detail because he can feel it and feeling translates into vision, somehow. 

The way is so slick and Daniel pushes into Jack, past the tightness that squeezes. This is where everything in their little world that has no name and no place except what they call it and where they put it. Random thoughts flash in his brain as he builds the rhythm. Turning out the light in Jack's office, pinned by a stupid cow, the way beer tastes when it's been in Jack's mouth and Daniel is kissing it off his lips and how Jack smiles when he's never ever going to tell you what he's thinking.

Jack is hoarse because he's mostly silent. Daniel does all the talking. Does the strange uninterrupted monologue of outrageous, unaware things he says because he doesn't even hear them. He's listening to Jack.

And he's going so fast that there is no speed. Something huge and warm and bright is coming towards him, and it feels so slow. And the closer it gets the faster it gets like the complete reversal of relativity and then, even though he knew it was close, it hits him.

Brutally hard like the best knockout punch ever dealt.

He comes, he grunts, he still has Jack hard in his hand and he rests his head on Jack's shoulder while he pumps. Comes down from his dizzying climb slowly and gets to listen to Jack moan and gets to enjoy feeling Jack. Letting the world be nothing but darkness, heat, and Jack.

And then Jack tightens. Daniel can feel his arm muscles become like rocks. Then he grabs Daniel's hand, forces those last few excruciating, beautiful jerks.

For a long time they lay there. Because that's the reward. Not just the touch and the ecstasy. The way they get to just be there.

And Daniel knows that this is what they've been after all the time. They just want to know that when they're done with everything, that they can rest and the other guy will be there.

"Daniel?"

"Jack?"

"I didn't have anything to say, I just wanted to hear your voice."

"Oh."

"You think the world will ever end?"

Daniel raises his head off of the pillow and turns onto his back. "Well, in a few billion years it has to, because our sun will run out of fuel."

"Hey! I'm off duty. No science for another 48 hours. I mean, do you think that before then that Earth will be destroyed or people will die off?"

"I don't know. Why are you asking me?"

"I guess I just always assume you'll have an answer."

"And what happens when I don't?"

"Then it was probably a stupid question."

"That was my first thought."

Jack slams a pillow down on top of him and Daniel laughs. Then asks if Jack wants pizza or Chinese or Mexican. And Jack asks why they can't have it all.

 

\- END -

  



End file.
